Questions for Ken

[thechubbyone]

Please feel free to add your own.........

- Why did he tell the Royal Court of Jersey that he was the joint owner of Forward Sports Fund only to change his mind?
- which names were submitted as the club's owners to be passed as "fit and proper"?
- At the Levi court case Bates claimed he has never put any of his own money into the club. He has also previously claimed he doesn't take a salary from the club, nor does he know who the owners are. Are we expected to believe he works for free, for people he doesn't know, in a company he has no share in?
- During administration when Astor agreed to write off £18m of debts as long as Bates and Forward remained in charge it was shown to KPMG that there was no link between Astor and Forward, with the previous connections being severed when Astor sold forward to Bates and Patrick Murrin. As it has since been revealed that they were never sold, how and when was this relationship severed?
- Why, in his opinion, would Astor agree to write off £18 million pounds of debt providing he stayed in charge?
- Of the £18 million debt, can he provide a detailed breakdown of how these debts came to be be and where the money was spent?
- Also on the subject of debts, can he provide a detailed breakdown of how the club came to owe money to Yorkshire Radio? In such a relationship it is presumable that it would be the club who would be owed the money.
- Can he provide guarantees that the legal bills from the Levi case were not taken from club money?
- Given the length of time we have known about the buy back clause on Thorp Arch, why did it take so long to approach the council?
- Given the presumably unexpected money that has come in via the sale of Delph, Garbutt and the 2 youngsters to Man City, where has this money gone? Why has it not been made available for the buyback of Thorp Arch?

[Phil LUFC]

Send him that in a letter and I expect you'll get a phone call. But you won't get any answers.

[thechubbyone]

Send him that in a letter and I expect you'll get a phone call. But you won't get any answers.

It will be in a letter, on the the internet and in a magazine shortly........

You're probably right about the phone call though. I'd better make sure something is included to say we would like the answers "on the record" rather than his usual telephone bollocks.

[burnleyinexile]

Send him that in a letter and I expect you'll get a phone call. But you won't get any answers.

It will be in a letter, on the the internet and in a magazine shortly........

You're probably right about the phone call though. I'd better make sure something is included to say we would like the answers "on the record" rather than his usual telephone bollocks.

The circles bates moves in I doubt that there is EVER a record of anything that is said.

[gazurtoids]

Good afternoon, Kenneth.
Can you tell us why you're applying to run Leeds United Football Club?
How would the club benefit from having you in charge?
How do you think you will benefit from being in charge?
What skills and assets do you think you can bring to the role?
Can you provide references from your previous positions to attest to your suitability for the post?
Where do you see yourself in five years time?


Well, thanks for coming in today, Kenneth. No, don't call us; we'll call you.

[burnleyinexile]

Why, if you had no intentions of investing in, or any interest in, the club, did you ever get involved in the original takeover?

[Ponte]

Do you have any kind of terminal illness that we may be fortunate enough to celebrate? (besides cuntitis)

[moscowhite]

Dear Ken,

What the fuck are you doing? You know, generally?

Thanks,

moscowhite.

//////

Actually, there is a question which comes to my mind pretty much every time Bates speaks:

Now Ken. Is that really the truth?

[the flying pig]

yeah, i can pretty much accept that there might be a shred of truth in bates' explanation for why the council deal fell through, a council can't just take a punt with taxpayers' money & it's entirely possible that the terms they were insisting on were, in looking to get the best possible deal for the taxpayer, unacceptable for the club. all perfectly understandable.

but i really cannot understand why we had no plan B.

given the attractiveness of doing the deal now, £5m [or was it £6m?] should be fucking chicken feed for a club that:

(1) turns over c. £25m a year;
(2) is seemingly profitable [even after making the high rent payments to Barnaway];
(3) just sold delph for a fee fairly widely reported to be £6m rising to a possible £8m;
(4) supposedly picked up £800k from man citeh for a couple of schoolkids;
(5) earned an initial £600k from everton for garbutt; and
(6) is supposedly considering incurring £80-£90m worth of debt to pay for a fairly speculative hotel investment [as opposed to a far smaller one with guaranteed cash flow benefits from day 1]

i mean, really, why is it that given the above we couldn't we effectively make at least a downpayment [assuming that a large slice of the delph £6m was not paid up front] on the £5m and get a mortgage to cover the rest? surely almost anyone would be happy to lend us the money if they had TA, supposedly worth £11m, as security if we stopped making repayments on our debt of a few million quid? a 20 year repayment mortgage at an interest rate of 6-7% would still only cost us about the same as the current level of rents [which are no longer fixed so may well go through the roof] and would leave us owning TA in twenty years' time...

i don't want to do too much proper thinking about this, not least because of the difficulties in working with incomplete information, but it seems that it must be the case that:

(a) the delph money has been, what's the word, appropriated by someone with no interest in the club's long-term financial position; and
(b) whoever made the decisions about whether 'the club' bought TA back or not is incompetent and/or doesn't have a particularly strong interest in securing good value for the club [or, to put it another way, securing bad value for Barnaway by forcing it to sell TA at less than half its market value]

[moscowhite]

i mean, really, why is it that given the above we couldn't we effectively make at least a downpayment [assuming that a large slice of the delph £6m was not paid up front] on the £5m and get a mortgage to cover the rest? surely almost anyone would be happy to lend us the money if they had TA, supposedly worth £11m, as security if we stopped making repayments on our debt of a few million quid?

One of the reasons given for going to the council (in the first report) was that due to Leeds United's 'recent history', no bank would lend us bus fare, let alone £6m. I didn't think about it too deeply at the time because, like you, I prefer to have at least a bit of information to work with and anyway, the council were going to sort us; but I wonder now if 'recent history' hadn't better translate as 'current owners'.

I mentioned this point about Bates's lack of wealth before, but what seems to be becoming clear is that not only does Bates not have any money, but he can't even raise any money. Which, for a man with fifty-odd years in business, in charge of a world famous football club that appears to be reasonably stable financially, is more than a little odd - especially as, like you said TFP, Thorp Arch ought to be safe collateral.

So my question for Bates is: why won't anybody loan you any money anymore?

[the flying pig]

i mean, really, why is it that given the above we couldn't we effectively make at least a downpayment [assuming that a large slice of the delph £6m was not paid up front] on the £5m and get a mortgage to cover the rest? surely almost anyone would be happy to lend us the money if they had TA, supposedly worth £11m, as security if we stopped making repayments on our debt of a few million quid?

One of the reasons given for going to the council (in the first report) was that due to Leeds United's 'recent history', no bank would lend us bus fare, let alone £6m. I didn't think about it too deeply at the time because, like you, I prefer to have at least a bit of information to work with and anyway, the council were going to sort us; but I wonder now if 'recent history' hadn't better translate as 'current owners'...

that doesn't' make any sense, though, when you think about it, does it? not if it was a loan secured against an asset? if i was a non leeds fan with £6m sitting in the bank then, regardless of the fact that bates is the worst kind of cunt, i would be more than happy to lend it to leeds provided they signed a watertight contract with me that said i would become the proud owner of an asset worth £11m the very second that leeds fell even one penny behind an agreed schedule of repayments? or am i missing something?

[Phil LUFC]

So my question for Bates is: why won't anybody loan you any money anymore?

Surely the answer is administration?

Bates has proven he can take a club into admin and come out as the owner. While he would fail a FAPP test if he did it again, any lender lending to the club must surely worry about us going into admin, paying a fraction of the debt but not actually losing the asset in the process.

Didn't leicester get a brand new, fully paid up stadium in this way?

[the flying pig]

...One of the reasons given for going to the council (in the first report) was that due to Leeds United's 'recent history', no bank would lend us bus fare...

that doesn't' make any sense, though, when you think about it, does it?...

but if it does make sense then, as you say, bates is a complete lame duck as an owner. basically this stinks whichever possible way you look at it.

[moscowhite]

So my question for Bates is: why won't anybody loan you any money anymore?

Surely the answer is administration?

Bates has proven he can take a club into admin and come out as the owner. While he would fail a FAPP test if he did it again, any lender lending to the club must surely worry about us going into admin, paying a fraction of the debt but not actually losing the asset in the process.

Didn't leicester get a brand new, fully paid up stadium in this way?

I hadn't thought about it that way - but it leads to another question - could Leicester borrow £6m if they needed to?

And, while I can imagine your average high street banking firm not wanting to touch a Bates mortgage, I'm a little surprised that he doesn't have some sort of private connection - maybe even overseas - that could invest that kind of money at short notice for a reliable old boy like Ken to get him out of a tight spot? Or, if he does, why hasn't that happened here?

[the flying pig]

...And, while I can imagine your average high street banking firm not wanting to touch a Bates mortgage, I'm a little surprised that he doesn't have some sort of private connection - maybe even overseas - that could invest that kind of money at short notice for a reliable old boy like Ken to get him out of a tight spot? Or, if he does, why hasn't that happened here?

yeah... that's my take on it [certainly if the delph money was sure to come in sometime soonish] a man of bates' means should easily be able to borrow the money.

[Mustafaster]

So many questions for the auld cunt, the principle one being "Why don't you fuck off and die?".
But we know that he's not going to give a straight answer to any of them.
But just fer the hell of it, here's mine.
Many of us have been following Leeds for more years than we care to remember, some for over 40 years, and we are well used to the ups and downs, as the song says. In all that time I can never remember Leeds fans being united over anything other than the love of the club. Even during the Glory Years some fans criticised Don Revie for being too defensive. However since the failure of the TA buyout I have not seen or heard of one Leeds fan who now thinks you are a fit person to run the club. The unanimous opinion is that we are in a far worse position in almost every sense than when you took over.
How do you answer those who say that the club is now in the worst state in its history under your chairmanship, and that you are principally to blame?

[MightyWhite]

Sounds like Squareball magazine is about to take a serious turn

Ask him from me how he get's his beard so thick and fluffy. Movember is coming up and I want to make an impact.

[Phil LUFC]

Sounds like Squareball magazine is about to take a serious turn

Ask him from me how he get's his beard so thick and fluffy. Movember is coming up and I want to make an impact.

Could we use the TSB printing connections to get this sort of thing drawn up independently of TSB? Perhaps funded from the same place but as a 1 page flyer to hand out. Would be a shame to risk TSB getting shut down after all the effort that has gone into resurecting it.

With that in mind, should the contact details be someone not directly or obviously connected?

[thechubbyone]

Could we use the TSB printing connections to get this sort of thing drawn up independently of TSB? Perhaps funded from the same place but as a 1 page flyer to hand out. Would be a shame to risk TSB getting shut down after all the effort that has gone into resurecting it.

That's why i planned to do it all as questions. Nothing libelous in asking questions is there?

[burnleyinexile]

Could we use the TSB printing connections to get this sort of thing drawn up independently of TSB? Perhaps funded from the same place but as a 1 page flyer to hand out. Would be a shame to risk TSB getting shut down after all the effort that has gone into resurecting it.

That's why i planned to do it all as questions. Nothing libelous in asking questions is there?

There must be a legal beagle on here, or someone must know one. Get the questions formulated and then run it past someone (a FAPP obviously), just to be on the safe side.